Bank jobs have always attracted women. Take any branch in your town or city and you are likely to find quite a few women ‘manning’ the counters. Most of them join as clerks, and a few, as officers. Today, some of the big banks have women at the helm too.
Yet, the representation of women in the executive cadre (at the level of Chief Manager and above), is yet to improve.
According to the Khandelwal committee report on HR issues of public sector banks, till 2009, of the total women workforce of 78,000-plus, only around 300 of them were in executive positions. More than 47,000 belonged to the clerical cadre.
So, why have more women not gone up the career graph?
The challenges
“It is not that they are incompetent, but the challenges of work-life balance coupled with transfers force them to not go beyond a point in their career,” said Usha Ananthasubramanian, Executive Director, Punjab National Bank.
The Khandelwal committee observed that in spite of competence, many female employees are not able to move up in the hierarchy. The mobility factor is a principal reason for their inadequate representation in the senior managements of PSBs.
A regional head of a PSB in Mangalore said that nearly 65 per cent of the new clerical recruits who joined his bank in Dakshina Kannada district this year were girls. On an average, the number of women joining banks is more than 50 per cent, he said.
Meera Arhanha, the first woman to become an executive and general manager in the 88-year-old Karnataka Bank, said that women are now inspired by seeing more of their ilk at the top now. That is an attraction for younger generation, and they aspire to hold such position in the bank, she said.
Meera Arhanha felt that the technology advancement has made the banking job more comfortable for the young new entrants. Since they are techno savvy, they are more comfortable in this sort of an atmosphere.
The All-India Bank Employees’ Association General-Secretary C.H. Venkatachalam observed that women earlier were expected to take up counter service, but now they are taking up even challenging assignments.